Researchers have found that your internal meditative focus during yoga practice can not only change how you interact with others but can also influence how accurately you perceive the world.
Can you tell if a line is in an upright position? Sounds easy enough. But, when you surround that line with a square frame at varying angles your perception of what’s upright can be altered. In psychology this is called the rod and frame test. This test has been around for a while and its been shown that some people are more sensitive to this visual illusion than others.
Can you tell if a line is in an upright position? Sounds easy enough. But, when you surround that line with a square frame at varying angles your perception of what’s upright can be altered. In psychology this is called the rod and frame test. This test has been around for a while and its been shown that some people are more sensitive to this visual illusion than others.
Example of the the stimuli used in the rod and frame test.
Researchers based in Italy (1) took a group of ashtanga yoga practitioners
and assessed them on the rod and frame test. There were 21 practitioners in the
group, they had been practicing from 3 months to 12 years (average: 4.8 years). As part of the experiment the
researchers also assessed the yogis personality traits associated with self-transcendence. Individuals that are high in self-transcendence are described as patient, selfless, and
seem better at tolerating ambiguity and uncertainty.
It turned out that as a group these yogis weren’t any better
at the rod and frame task than the controls. However, when the results were
correlated with the personality assessment the researchers found a clear
relationship. The ashtanga yoga practitioners that scored high
on self-transcendence personality weren’t as easily fooled by the visual illusion, they were
more likely to accurately assess whether the rod was upright regardless of the
orientation of the frame.
So why is there a relationship between visual processing and
personality type in these Ashtangis? To be able to understand this when need to
delve into a bit of cognition. When asked to complete rod and frame task there are
two ways that people can unconsciously go about it; 1) they can predominately use the square
frame to make their judgment, or 2) they can use utilise internal body cues
associated with balance and body awareness. People who are more practiced at
using internal cues tend to do better on the task because they're better at discounting the frame when making a judgment.
Ashtanga yoga involves intense internal inward focussed
attention, which with practice would result in better use of these internal body cues. This
internal focus is also one of the tools used in the practice to enter into
a mediative state. Mediation itself involves becoming non-reactive to sensory
stimuli and thoughts associated with issues in the past or present. So it seems
that off the mat this non-reactiveness can also increase your patience and
tolerance when interacting with other people.
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References:
1. Fiori, F., David, N., & Aglioti, S. M. (2014).
Processing of proprioceptive and vestibular body signals and self-transcendence
in Ashtanga yoga practitioners. Fronteirs
in Human Neuroscience, 8(734), doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00734.